A few examples from this year’s end of season:

• I lost my pair of $200 polarized sunglasses and broke my landing yet – neither has been replaced yet
• I have yet to unpack my backpack / fishing pack
• My fly tying gear is scattered everywhere
• I still need to clean my fishing gear for storage

Basically, I sort of crash after all that buildup of excitement and anticipation ends and I suddenly lose the motivation to even think about it. So yeah, I’d say it feels a lot like a hangover.

Thankfully, it’s not permanent and the fact that I’m even posting this means that I’m recovering. I need to accept the fact that there’s still fishing after trout. It mostly comes in the form of Bass and Steelhead. In fact, I took my son out fly fishing for Bass a couple weekends ago and although we didn’t catch much, it was a refreshing change.

Bass definitely change their feeding habits in the fall and I’m not overly familiar with it. One effective and fun way to fish for them during the summer is with top water flies, but this is no longer true in the fall. Also, since most bass fishing is done in water that can’t be waded, it means I need to find a better way of getting at fish in deeper water. In the summer, I would use my float tube but I’m not too keen to jump in it with the colder waters of fall. What I really need, is a pontoon boat.

Steelhead are a different story and still something that I avoid like the plague. It’s not that I dislike them: I certainly have nothing against catching 10+ lb Rainbow Trout that can and do frequently take you into your backing. It’s just that I dislike the environments that must be endured to fish for them most of the time in Southern Ontario. Perhaps it makes me sound like an antisocial snob, but I don’t particularly enjoy sharing water with many other fishermen, especially the type that often lurk by the hundreds on small stretches of water during a good Steelhead run.

Surprisingly (or not), the number of productive resident trout rivers in Southern Ontario is relatively small in comparison to the number of productive steelhead rivers. However, though you might often find yourself enjoying a nice stretch of resident trout water by yourself, you’d be hard pressed to encounter such conditions when out on one of the many steelhead rivers. It’s a real dilemma for someone who is accustomed to the much more solitary resident trout fishing of this area. I also understand that this is not exactly the norm everywhere and when I complain about the conditions here, I’m only referring to Steelhead fishing Southern Ontario (though I’m sure the problem is not unique to this area).

On the plus side, our area boasts an extremely large number of Great Lakes rivers and tributaries that see large runs of Steelhead. I’m sure there are ways to experience more solitary Steelhead fishing in the area, which I have simply not discovered. One obvious way is to stay away from the more popular rivers: in other words, don’t try to fish the Credit River at Erindale Park. Another is to get out on a drift boat, but to be realistic, this means hiring a guide. While I’m all for putting money into the hands of fly fishing outfitters, at several hundred dollars per day, it’s simply not realistic to rely on drift boat guiding as a way to enjoy the sport. My only other idea is to fish when the weather sucks – but of course that means less enjoyment for me.

The long and short of it all is that I really do need to find a way to enjoy fishing into the fall and winter, after my trout hangover ends. My current stance on this is that I need to splurge and do a couple Steelhead guided trips, to hopefully get a better inside scoop on locations, timing and ideas on how to target Steelhead without massive crowds. At this point, I’m very much a novice when it comes to understanding this fish so anything I can learn will surely be useful.

The post Trout Hangover appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.

Fishing Spider encountered on the Credit River.

Unfortunately the picture quality is not too great as the camera I was carrying at the time was pretty bad.  It’s hard to get a sense of the size of this thing, but it was resting on a huge boulder in the middle of the river and was probably about the size of a child’s hand.  Apparently it’s called a Fishing Spider (genus Dolomedes).

The post Speaking of Spiders… appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.

Things were a lot slower than I expected in the afternoon.  I was casting poppers for a good hour and a half without much luck.  The water was actually quite warm, probably even a bit out of the comfort zone for bass, so this was likely the issue.

I gave up on the poppers and went subsurface with an angora bugger and things started to pick up a bit.  Landed a pike, a couple largemouth bass and a few small overzealous baby bass.  Nothing spectacular, but better than nothing.

As evening approached and the temps cooled a bit and the sun started to set, I ditched the bugger and went back to poppers… again, no luck.  As a last-ditch effort, I thought I’d try tying on a smaller terrestrial fly and twitching it on the surface.  A few minutes in, I made a cast close to shore; I’m guessing in about a foot of water.  One twitch and I saw something subtly gulp my fly down.  I thought it was either another tiny bass or a bluegill – sure looked like it from the delicate take.  Then it ran straight at my tube… fast.  I was stripping line as fast as I could to keep tension on and I knew then that I was into a better fish.  This nice largemouth was the result:

Nice largemouth bass taken on a little terrestrial before dark.

To be honest, I’ve fished this water a few times before and never been overly impressed with it.  Had I not caught this just before heading in, I likely wouldn’t have been too excited to come back.  I know they’re in there now though, so I’ll definitely be back to find more of these in the near future!

The post Floating for Bass appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.

1. Steelhead and salmon fishing in any river within an hour drive in any direction of my house is generally a shoulder to shoulder meatfest.  Not my idea of fun, at all.
2. Warm water fishing with a fly rod has often seemed impractical, or inaccessible, due to the difficulty getting into a river or lake without some sort of boat (most are not wadeable and/or have zero room for back casting).

Well, I’m happy to say that I’m a reformed warm water fly fishing enthusiast. This happened gradually over the past couple of years. The main triggers included a new float tube which made a bunch of new water accessible, as well as discovering a couple nice wadeable stretches of rivers I didn’t previously know existed.  Of course, the hot weather this summer helped push me over the edge a bit too.

First Carp on a Fly Rod

The net result was lots of fun warm water fishing this year.  In fact, I caught three species for the very first time on a fly rod this year: smallmouth bass, pike and carp.  Previous years had me dabbling with largemouth bass and panfish.

One of many smallmouth bass taken on the fly this summer.

Next year I’m planning to add a pontoon boat to my ever-growing inventory, so hopefully that will make things even more interesting!

The post When It’s Too Hot For Trout appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.

I was moving rather quickly, casting dries behind rocks and under overhanging trees when, on a cast to a spot I didn’t really expect to hold fish, my fly disappeared. On my first pull, I thought it was a snag, but the fish soon moved out into the middle of the river. This was not deep water, maybe 1-2 feet, but somehow this fish was managing to stay on the bottom, pulling me upstream. It was getting dark, so I couldn’t see what was on the end of my line. I was nervous, because my 3wt rod and 6x tippet weren’t a good match for this fish.

A couple minutes later, with the fish making a run upstream, the tension on my rod suddenly let go and the fly came hurling back towards me. Only… there was more than a fly on the end of my line.  There was a small, lifeless trout on it. I must have hooked this little guy after which something larger decided to make him dinner, I was shocked!

This is water that, to the best of my knowledge, has only brown trout, with perhaps the odd brookie. I’ve never caught or seen seen anything else here. So that begs the question, what exactly did I catch? If this was indeed a brown, it was a mighty large one, easily the largest I have ever hooked. Was it possible something larger was in the river?  I’ve heard rumours of Atlantic Salmon adults being planted in this section of river, but I had never known it to be true. Unfortunately, I’ll never have the answer and all I have to show for it is a picture of this little trout and another big fish story.

Heart pounding, feeling both excited and disappointed, I continued upstream to spend a few minutes in some better water before calling it a night. A few casts and my efforts paid off with this nice brown. Memorable night on the water, to say the least!

The post River Monster? appeared first on Caffeinated Fly Fisher.